Alexander Payne
Alexander Payne
Alexander Payneis an American film director, screenwriter, and producer, known for the films Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants, and Nebraska. His films are noted for their dark humor and satirical depictions of contemporary American society. Payne is a two time winner of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and a three time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth10 February 1961
CityOmaha, NE
CountryUnited States of America
I think that Peter Jennings is the only decent one of the big three.
I don't think so much about verbal comedy. I always think about visual comedy. I was raised watching silents, and I'm always thinking about how to make cinema, not good talking - although I want good talking. I'm much more interested in framing, composition, and orchestration of bodies in space, and so forth. My goal is always what Chuck Jones wanted his Warner Brothers cartoons to be, which was if you turn down the sound, you could still tell what's going on. I think if you watch most of my films with the sound off, you could still tell what's going on.
I think if you watch most of my films with the sound off, you could still tell what's going on.
But it's just that the whole country is making generally lousy films these days and has been for quite a while. That's the big problem that we all have to think about.
Acting is a lot easier than people think it is.
I like to think of film-making not just as an act of personal self-aggrandisement but rather as an act of public service.
I think cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.
If you're not making epic, archetypal films on some level, I think you're wasting a great potential of cinema.
I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script.
If you have your movies so that everyone understands everything, I think that's probably not a very good movie.
To be fair-not that I really care about being fair to anyone, ever-but to be fair, I'm sure that same ratio of bad films to good probably exists in every studio.
If you're trying to recreate life, the life that you best know is the one you grew up with.
There's a bizarre insistence on how a story should be. 'The protagonist must be sympathetic!' they say. Whatever that means. I never engage in that discussion. I never use that word, 'sympathetic.' I just know 'interesting.'
'Independent' means one thing to me: It means that regardless of the source of financing, the director's voice is extremely present. It's such a pretentious term, but it's auteurist cinema. Director-driven, personal, auteurist... Whatever word you want.